The global information and communications technology (ICT) industry is entering 2026 pulled sharply in two directions: surging demand for AI infrastructure is lifting server shipments to new highs, even as rising component costs and geopolitical uncertainty press down on consumer devices.
Taiwan's Market Intelligence and Consulting Institute (MIC) released its 2026 ICT industry outlook on Wednesday, forecasting that global laptop shipments will fall 9.7% year-on-year and desktop shipments will decline 9.3%. Server shipments, by contrast, are expected to grow 12.4%, reaching 16.19 million units. Taiwan's own server exports are projected to rise 12.6%, reaching approximately 13.95 million units.
MIC ICT industry consultant Lee Chien-Hsun (李建勳) said the sector faces several competing pressures in 2026. US-Iran tensions have pushed up global energy and transportation costs, while the Trump administration's tariff policies — linked to market access mechanisms — have added uncertainty to global supply chain planning. Despite these headwinds, Lee said the deepening of AI applications and the accelerating build-out of AI infrastructure continue to inject growth momentum into the sector, prompting companies across the industry to reposition their strategic and supply chain footprints.
Server Growth Offsets PC and Smartphone Weakness
MIC attributes weakness in the PC market primarily to price increases for memory, storage, and CPUs, which have raised end-user retail prices and suppressed replacement demand. The server market tells a very different story. MIC projects server growth will be driven by AI training and inference demand, a surge in cloud service provider capital expenditure, and the expansion of Neocloud operators — independent, AI-focused cloud providers that have rapidly scaled infrastructure investment in recent years.
AI servers are expected to account for 27.6% of total server shipments in 2026, rising further to 36.7% by 2030. MIC characterized this trajectory as a structural shift rather than a cyclical recovery, with AI compute infrastructure — not traditional hardware refresh cycles — becoming the dominant demand driver for the broader ICT sector.
Global smartphone shipments are projected at 1.13 billion units in 2026, down 8.8% year-on-year. MIC cited memory price increases, along with oil price, freight, and currency volatility stemming from Middle East tensions, as key factors weighing on consumer purchasing appetite. Lee noted that mid-to-low-end handsets are most exposed to memory cost inflation, while premium-segment brands retain greater ability to pass on costs. MIC expects Apple and Samsung to outperform Chinese brands, with Apple maintaining a relative advantage in 2026 due to its premium product positioning and supply chain leverage.
Taiwan's Server and Networking Segments Find Support
For Taiwan specifically, MIC forecasts laptop and desktop exports of 121 million units and 35.71 million units respectively in 2026, constrained by component shortages, price increases, and slowing demand from the US market. Taiwan's server shipments, however, are expected to benefit from expanded procurement by international cloud service providers and branded server companies, supporting the 12.6% growth projection.
Networking products represent another area of relative strength. MIC anticipates that long-delayed US broadband subsidy programs will begin to materialize in 2026, while European carriers accelerate fiber upgrades — developments expected to drive demand for Wi-Fi 7, passive optical network (PON), and 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) equipment. MIC also projects the global network switch market will reach $60 billion in 2026, representing year-on-year growth of 19.5%.
Supply Chains Shift Toward Southeast Asia and the United States
MIC identified tariffs, customer proximity, and high-value manufacturing requirements as three forces reshaping where Taiwanese companies choose to locate production. For laptops, China's share of global production capacity is projected to fall from 68% in 2026 to 62% by 2030, while Southeast Asia's share rises from 29% to 35%. For smartphones, China's share is projected to drop from 66% to 52%, with Southeast Asia rising from 32% to 47%.
The shift is most pronounced for AI servers. MIC forecasts that Taiwan's share of AI server production capacity will decline from 47% to 30% over the same period, while Mexico's share falls from 30% to 15%. The United States is projected to increase its AI server production share from 23% to 40%, with Southeast Asia and Europe each rising from near-zero to reach 7% and 8% respectively by 2030. MIC characterized this not as simple capacity expansion, but as a strategic relocation driven by tariff exposure, the need to manufacture closer to major customers, and requirements for high-value production capabilities.
Five Issues Shaping the ICT Industry Through 2026
MIC outlined five critical themes it expects to define the ICT sector in 2026: component shortages and capacity crowding-out caused by AI demand; the expansion of data center scope beyond compute servers to encompass full engineering systems such as racks, liquid cooling, power grids, and switches; the deployment of edge AI applications; the deepening of Beyond 5G and 6G use cases; and the emergence of satellite communications as a resilient network infrastructure layer.
As AI infrastructure investment accelerates, MIC concluded that competitive advantage in the ICT sector is increasingly determined not by hardware shipment volumes alone, but by a company's ability to participate across the full ecosystem of data centers, edge computing, and resilient network infrastructure. （Related： Opinion | Da Vinci Had AI? He'd Have Built a Guild. So Should We. ｜ Latest ）
